A. Campbell on the Glories of the Written Word

Excerpt from an unpublished 1828 letter to John Abbot of Macon, Georgia, by Alexander Campbell during the revision of the 1826 first edition of the Sacred Oracles:

How happy are we who by these cold and lifeless characters upon paper can talk with our friends on spiritual and eternal things living on any part of the earth! This is the most useful of arts; and how much does it contribute to the enjoyments of Christians. That God’s love should be written on paper is also a wonderful thing, but so it is. And that the whole scheme of things reaching forth unto eternity should be laid open to our view by these marks on paper is one of the proofs of God’s wisdom and goodness which we ought always to bear in mind. We do a great deal for the good of mankind by endeavouring to put into the hands of men plain and intelligible copies of the Gospel and of the institutions of the Lord and Savior. One copy may descend to remote posterity, and may awake some genius who will arise and dispense the blessing to millions. Fired by these views I feel desirous of multiplying the oracles of God to a considerable extent in the way proposed. 

(Transcribed from the original letter held in the Center for Restoration Studies by Carisse Mickey Berryhill.)

How History Should Be Told

A few days ago I was flipping through the channels when I came to a live broadcast of the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. There speaking to a group of hundreds of admirers was Robert Caro, the great biographer of Lyndon Johnson.

As of 2012, Caro has now completed four of a projected five volumes covering the years of LBJ. Caro had a lot of interesting things to say about Johnson the man. But what I found most interesting was his reflection on how he conceives of his project. He told the crowd:

I don't think of these books as being about Lyndon Johnson. . . .  I never had the slightest interest in writing a book just to tell the life of a famous man. From the moment I first thought of doing books, I thought of biographies as a way of examining the great forces that shaped the times that they lived in.

Caro's words reminded me of something I had read in the original preface to Fernand Braudel's 600,000-word history of the Mediterranean world during the second half of the sixteenth century. A father of modern historiography, Braudel relates that when he began his research on what would eventually become such a massive work, he meant only to write a diplomatic history of the reign of the Spanish king Philip II. But the further he explored the man and his times, the more the historian realized that whether he was studying the king of Spain or Don John of Austria, "despite their illusions" such leaders of the time were "more acted upon than actors" (19).

More acted upon than actors. Such an interesting phrase, it suggests that although it would be foolish to say that human leaders such as Alexander the Great or Martin Luther or Adolf Hitler made no real difference, historical contexts like geography, political states, and economies are also "participants" in the story that is history.

So, whatever I eventually publish in the field of history, I want it to be about people. I also want it to be about "the great forces that shaped the times they lived in." That seems to me the right way.

Considering Calvin

Over the next few days, I'll have a few things to say about John Calvin. That's because I'm supposed to write something about him for our local paper, the Amarillo Globe-News.

July 10th of this year will mark the 500th anniversary of Calvin's birth. So I called the paper and asked the editor of the op-ed page if they'd like to have something about Calvin's life and legacy. He said yes, and that they'd like to publish it in the Sunday paper for July 5th, since Sunday's paper gives a lot more room for opinion pieces.

So now I'm going back to the Institutes of the Christian Religion (I'd forgotten it was so long!) and T. H. L. Parker's wonderful biography. Now for my questions to you:

1. What absolutely, positively has to be a part of any 700-word biography of Calvin?

2. When it comes to sources, besides what I've mentioned here, what else should I be sure to read?

Reading and Writing (and Vice Versa)

A new article by Old Testament scholar Carolyn J. Sharp got me thinking about the importance of writing. The title of the piece is "Voiced in Paradox: Prophecy and the Contemporary Church" [published in Reflections (Winter 2006) pp. 10-13]. Here's a taste:

"Go now; write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, so that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever" (Isaiah 30:8).

"The Israelite prophets shouted God's Word from Temple gate and city square; they pleaded with kings and wrestled with priests. They performed the terror of God's Word using rotting figs, shattered pottery, barley cakes baked on camel dung, . . .

"Amos, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea offered all of themselves in their efforts to become transparent to God's purposes. They knew that trenchant tones and vivid tableaux could fire the spiritual imagination, could draw the believer irresistibly into an encounter with the will of God. But displays of brilliant oratory and dramatic technique were only the beginning. The prophets also wrote. They wrote poetry and stories and exhortations and prayers. They risked writing in order that the power of God's Word might reach peoples near and far, contemporary and yet unborn."

As Sharp points out, preaching--and, yes, with lots of potent visuals--can be vital and effective. But prophecy is maximized and extended, sometimes in unbelievable ways, only when the prophet writes.

The true prophetic voice comes from not only seeing that the world is terribly twisted. It also comes from catching a vision of what must change so that the kingship of God, His rightful rule in the world He created, will more completely have its way.

I'm glad for the true prophets I've met in the blogosophere. Like the prophets I read in the Bible, I like some blogging prophets better than others. Some of them seem clearer, more powerful to me. Still, for each one who speaks a true word for God, I'm thankful.

Brothers and sisters: Write on!

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For a couple of reasons that I won't go into, for the time being I've decided to keep my blog with Blogger. For now, "Frankly Speaking" is staying here.

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I'm planning to start a book club that will meet here in Amarillo. If it takes off like I hope it will, regular participants will have the opportunity to nominate and decide on what books we'll read and discuss going forward. To start, though, I have to make the decision. My choice is a book that I hope will establish the tone and expectation for the group.

I've selected Mark Noll's, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. It's a book I've wanted to digest for a long time now. From what I understand, it's central thesis is that the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there's not much of one; that Evanglicalism has lost a lot of the intellectual rigor that characterized the movement decades ago. I'd like to meet with a group dedicated to being a part of the solution.

I think I would like the pace of maybe five or six meetings in a year's time; a meeting once every other month, but none between, say, Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. During the first year, the group could read and discuss one book from certain categories like:

1. Bible/theology
2. Discipleship/spirituality
3. Fiction
4. Christian mission/world Christianity
5. History (religious or otherwise)

Anyway, if you're within striking distance of Amarillo and would like to receive notices about the club, please send me your email address. You can access "Email me" in the right column here at "Frankly Speaking."